Other forms: auctioned, auctions, auctioning
An auction is a sale where the item goes to whoever offers the highest price. Sell at auction, an auction house, bid at the auction.
The auctioneer takes rising bids and closes the sale with a hammer — going, going, gone. The reserve is the lowest price the seller will accept, and a lot is one item or group of items. Online auctions work the same way with a clock instead of a room. Note under the hammer, meaning being auctioned, and Dutch auction, where the price falls until somebody accepts it.
1nounauctionA sale where the item goes to the highest bidder.
“The whole contents of the house went to auction in one day.”
2verbsellTo sell something at an auction.
“They auctioned the collection and it made four times the estimate.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
auction is a kind of sale.
Latin auctio means an increase, from augere, to increase — the same verb behind augment and author. An auction is named for the rising price rather than the sale, which is exactly the mechanism.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ewg-
Latin
auctiō — an increase, auction
English, today
auction
Built from
From Latin auctiō (“an increase, auction”), from augeō (“to increase”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA